RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2011)

TMG: How disappointing. If you want a good animal movie, go see Zookeeper or Buck. This film almost made James Franco in Your Highness start to look a bit better—and I was certain that was just not possible. This film had zero bloodline connection with the original Planet of the Apes from 1968.I would liken this film to a bad remake of Project X with Mathew Broderick and Helen Hunt from 1987.

This film started slow and then turned boring. Franco’s career, after last years Oscars, Your Highness and now this, may well have ended at 127 hours. Mark Wahlberg bounced back from the totally forgetable but forgiveable, 2001 version of Planet of the Apes, but I doubt Franco will get that lucky. On the plus side, the special effects and fake apes were pretty amazing. Why cannot they apply that same magic to Franco”s performance? One early clue to this movie was the casting of Freida Pinto as the love interest of Franco. You could almost sense this was going to be the slumdog of ape movies.

Joy Lynn: If only this movie had been more multi dimensional. It could have used more subplots. I got bored after the first hour. There was nothing to keep me interested other than getting to know Caesar. I almost shed a tear in the beginning. Connecting with Caesar was not a problem. Will (Franco) and his girlfriend (Pinto) on the other hand were not near as much fun to watch.

Nothing stood out in the film except the excellent computer generated special effects and the action packed ape attacks and chaos. Apes are such fun creatures to observe, I would have liked to have gotten to know more about the apes and how they communicate. I felt cheated and almost went bananas before the movie was over.